The vanity of the sciences. Physical science will not console me for the ignorance of morality in the time of affliction. But the ...science of ethics will always console me for the ignorance of the physical sciences.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »

Before I knew that I was Jewish or a girl I knew that I was a member of the working class. At a time when I had not yet grasped th...e significance of the fact that in my house English was a second language, or that I wore dresses while my brother wore pants, I knew--and I knew it was important to know--that Papa worked hard all day long.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »

A beautiful sentence is beautiful, and a beautiful flower is beautiful, but their duration is nearly the same--a day, a century. N...othing dies more quickly than a style that is not supported by the solidity of strong thought. It shrivels up like a slackened hide; it falls in a heap like a rotten vine deprived of the tree it entwines. And if someone says that the vine keeps a tree with withered roots from falling down, I would agree. Style is also a force, but its value is that much more quickly diminished when it exhausts itself in preserving from annihilation the fragility which it embraces and sustains.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »

He was one of that class of whom we hear a great deal, but, for the most part, see nothing at all,--the Puritans. It would be in v...ain to kill him. He died lately in the time of Cromwell, but he reappeared here. Why should he not? Some of the Puritan stock are said to have come over and settled in New England. They were a class that did something else than celebrate their forefathers' day, and eat parched corn in remembrance of that time. They were neither Democrats nor Republicans, but men of simple habits, straightforward, prayerful; not thinking much of rulers who did not fear God, not making many compromises, nor seeking after available candidates.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »

The news spread like wildfire among us youths, when formerly, once in a year or two, one of these boats came up the Concord River,... and was seen stealing mysteriously through the meadows and past the village. It came and departed as silently as a cloud, without noise or dust, and was witnessed by few. One summer day this huge traveler might be seen moored at some meadow's wharf, and another summer day it was not there. Where precisely it came from, or who these men were who knew the rocks and soundings better than we who bathed there, we could never tell. We knew some river's bay only, but they took rivers from end to end. They were a sort of fabulous rivermen to us. It was inconceivable by what sort of mediation any mere landsman could hold communication with them. Would they heave to, to gratify his wishes? No, it was favor enough to know faintly of their destination, or the time of their possible return.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »

Henry James seems most entirely in his element, doing that is to say what everything favours his doing, when it is a question of r...ecollection. The mellow light which swims over the past, the beauty which suffuses even the commonest little figures of that time, the shadow in which the detail of so many things can be discerned which the glare of day flattens out, the depth, the richness, the calm, the humour of the whole pageant--all this seems to have been his natural atmosphere and his most abiding mood.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »

When you are waiting for a train, don't keep perpetually looking to see if it is coming. The time of its arrival is the business o...f the conductor, not yours. It will not come any sooner for all your nervous glances and your impatient pacing, and you will save strength if you will keep quiet. After we discover that the people who sit still on a long railroad journey reach that journey's end at precisely the same time as those who "fuss" continually, we have a valuable piece of information which we should not fail to put to practical use.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »